Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale comes to Hulu

Following on from their success with an adaptation of Stephen King’s 11.22.63, US streaming service Hulu is now preparing a version of Margaret Atwood’s classic story The Handmaid’s Tale with MGM Television

The 100’s Bruce Miller will be creator, writer and executive producer of the first season, which will air next year. Elisabeth Moss, star of Top of the Lake, will play Offred, a Handmaid in Gilead (formerly the United States), a theocratic military dictatorship where women are nearly all forbidden to read, and many are kept as concubines aka Handmaids. She is forced to navigate between commanders, their cruel wives, domestic marthas and her fellow handmaids — where anyone could be a spy for Gilead — all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken from her.

“Hulu has established itself as a home for blockbuster television events and what better way to expand our originals offering than with a series based on this acclaimed, best-selling novel,” Hulu head of content Craig Erwich told The Hollywood Reporter. “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was seen as ahead of its time and we look forward to bringing it to life on our platform.”

“The Handmaid’s Tale is a project that we have been committed to bringing to life as its story remains as powerful today as it did when Margaret first published her novel,” Mark Burnett, president of television and digital and Steve Stark, president of television development and production at MGM, explained. “Handmaid’s Tale has won multiple awards inspiring a film, a graphic novel, an opera, a ballet and finally, for the first time, a compellingly immersive drama series that has found the perfect home at Hulu and its star in Elisabeth Moss.”

The novel was first published in 1985 and was adapted as a film in 1990 with Natasha Richardson and Robert Duvall; the screenplay was by Harold Pinter.